Didn't want to get too, too technical in my first post. If you had a binary number (base 2) of 1001, then to convert that to base 10, it'd be

(1 x 23) + (0 x 22) + (0 x 21) + (1 x 10)

Where the exponent becomes the "pattern" for the place value. This is my guess on why DS has such an affinity for this algorithm. If you were doing something crazy like base 5, then the number of 4315 would be expressed as

(4 x 52) + (3 x 51) + (1 x 50)

That sort of thing. I left out the actual binary number I used in the example. Sorry if that was confusing. Wikipedia has a good example for any given base number. Found a few pointers for when the topic comes up again...

JB

P.S. Also a lot easier to post after figuring out how to superscript/subscript on the forum.